by Aubrey Irons
I let the knife sink in deep.
“Where,” she croaks.
“Garret Moreland’s apartment.”
I watch as the last piece suddenly clicks into place behind her eyes.
I watch as her heart rips in front of me.
Ana’s head slowly shakes side to side, her lips moving but no words forming.
“Garett was cheap, actually. There wasn’t even a negotiation.”
My voice slices through the air between us, and she flinches as the words come.
“Jason put up a little more of a fight, but—”
“Please stop talking.”
I don’t. She needs to hear this.
“Chris was the real holdout.”
“Stop it.”
A single tear slides down her cheek, her shoulders slumped as she shakes her head.
“Please stop it.”
I can’t.
“For what it’s worth, Chris fought it the hardest.”
“Goddamnit, stop talk—”
“But he took the money,” I hiss, stepping toward her, my eyes blazing. “They all took the money, Ana. They all took the deal. Every fucking one of them—”
“You paid men to leave me!”
She screams it, her eyes dragging like razorblades up to mine.
I freeze.
This is what she looks like when her heart breaks.
I’ve meddled, I’ve pulled strings, I’ve fucked with her life more than she ever knew, and saw more than she can ever imagine. And yet this is the part I never had to see.
This is the aftermath of me.
“Ana—”
“No, stop.” She’s crying now, tears pouring down her cheeks, and something breaks inside of me.
“What is wrong with you?”
Her voice is like broken glass. She doesn’t even look mad anymore, she just looks empty.
Crushed.
Broken.
“Is it a power thing? You just like being able to step all over my puny little life because you can?”
I’m silent.
“WHY, Bastian!” she screams, choking on her tears.
“You know why.”
“ANSWER ME!”
“Because you didn’t want them!” I roar.
She blinks, staring at me like she’s horrified.
“I didn’t want them, or you didn’t want me to want them.”
“Both. I know you didn’t want—”
“You don’t know what I want!”
“Yes, I do.”
I grab her, and I kiss her.
I kiss her with everything I have - every single piece of me that makes me me. The fury, the hate, the love, the lust, the confusion, and the pain. I kiss her like I should have kissed her years ago. Not out of some sort of jealousy. Not because I felt like I had to in order to get her.
Because in the end, there was only ever her.
It lasts all of three seconds before she pulls away and slaps me hard across the mouth.
I growl as she backs away, shaking her head and wiping her tears on the back of her hand, smudging her eyeliner.
“We’re done here,” she says coldly.
“Excuse me.”
“We are done here,” she spits out. “All of it, Bastian. The arrangement, this bullshit with your inheritance that I could not give a single shit about. You, me?”
She backs away from me.
“Over, done. Go find some other girl to fake all this for you, because I’m done.”
“Goddamnit, Ana,” I growl, my voice like gravel as I go to move toward her. “Do not walk out that—”
“Or what, Bastian?” She laughs, bitterly, the streaks from her tears staining her face.
“What could you possibly still have left up your sleeves, huh? You paid men to break up with me. To leave me. To cheat on me.”
“Listen to me.”
“Shut up,” she hisses. “You played games with my life. You even faked threatening to fire my dad and got me to walk out of the most important meeting of my career to come here. And for what, so you could fuck with my life some more?”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“Do you even know Tom Westing from Luminous?”
“No.”
She laughs, bitterly as she shoves me aside and strides for the door.
“Have a nice life, Bast—”She stops, something catching her eyes in the corner of the room.
“Are those…” She steps toward the little grow box with the last of my mother’s Ophelia roses, quickly fading.
“These are your mom’s.”
“Stay away from that,” I choke out.
She glances back at me, smiling thinly.
“Looks like everything dies and turns to shit around you, doesn’t it?”
“Get the fuck out.”
“With pleasure,” she hisses, turning sharply and storming for the door.
“Get the fuck out!” I roar, crumbling inside - shoving her away because maybe shoving her away will hurt less than letting her slip from my fingers.
She turns once at the door to my room, her eyes piercing right into me and right through me, tattooing that look across my memory.
“Have a nice life, Bastian.”
The door slams shut behind her.
…The storm breaks.
The table cracks in half as I flip it over and send it slamming into the wall. Shelves are cleared, side-tables are upended. A hole appears in one wall where my fist slams through it. It’s like I have to prove to myself that I am every bit the monster she knows I am, and I don’t stop until the place is destroyed.
Shattered.
Broken.
Some time later, how long I don’t even know, I stagger out to my balcony, bottle in hand.
Her truck is gone.
I close my eyes, and I’m about to pull the bottle to my lips when my phone rings back inside. I let it, ignoring the sound as I take a long, deep pull from the bottle. But the fucking thing just keeps ringing, again and again. I snarl, storming back inside and shuffling through the debris of my life as it just keeps fucking ringing.
I finally find it under what was a shelf of books.
“What,” I snarl. “Whoever the fuck this is, you’d better—”
I freeze, almost dropping the phone as I drop to my knees.
Dylan Forbes is awake.
“Your phone off?”
I groan, the pain inside my head thundering like goddamn fireworks with every breath I take.
I’m hung over, of course.
Fuck off, like you wouldn’t be.
“Bastian.”
I wince, glaring up at Brent.
“I fucking heard you, and yes. My phone’s off.”
There’s a certain feeling when literally everything in your life blows up in your face. I’ve felt it once before when I was ten, and Mrs. Tottingham took me by the hand, sat me down outside on the bench by the patio, and told me my parents wouldn’t be coming home.
Ever.
The feeling is visceral and cutting, and raw. It’s the feel of a blast or an explosion - the wind of it blowing you backward. Or maybe that’s being too flowery.
Maybe the feeling just sucks, no matter how poetic you want to get with it.
Ana walking out was the worst, but in the five days since it turns out that was just the first domino to fall. Because slowly, whatever life I had left has begun to unravel.
Dylan’s awake. That’s the one good thing here. My friend is awake, alive, and not a fucking vegetable. He’s even walking.
The bad news is, he’s suing me.
My best friend in the whole fucking world is suing me for willful endangerment, attempted manslaughter and some other shit.
Oh, and it gets worse.
My other friend-slash-also-my-attorney also happens to be his attorney. You can look around my room at the freshly empty bottles from last night and take a wild guess which client Ash took and which one he dumped.
So that
’s two out of three.
And then there’s Tyler, and Tyler can go fuck himself. Tyler who sent me a single text the night she left:
“Go fuck yourself with a claw hammer and walk off a cliff. We’re done.”
I don’t even fucking care at this point what the hell he’s talking about with that shit, because I know he’s the one that told Ana about the bet. He’s the one that sent the first domino crashing over.
So that’s three for three.
Three of the oldest friends I have, gone. Three of the only friends I have, really. And just like that, it’s me, this old house, and Brent. I don’t need to get sanctimonious about “not knowing what I have until it’s gone.” For one, everyone knows that, and besides, I knew full goddamn well what I had before she walked out.
I had perfection.
Perfection I didn’t deserve, that I know. Perfection that was fleeting. Perfection that couldn’t last, not around me.
Clearly.
I’ve tried her phone a couple of dozen times in the last three days, but you can imagine how that’s gone. I expected nothing, but the message is still pretty fucking clear.
And that pretty much catches us up to the now, where Brent - who’s kind of filling in as council for me until I can hire a real attorney, is pacing my room like a sweaty little ball of nervous energy that I seriously don’t need right now, advising me to avoid calls.
“They’re my friends, Brent. Whatever it is, trust me, we can work this out outside of the courtroom.”
I’ve got about fifteen missed calls from Ash, and almost double that from Dylan. Zero from Tyler, but again, he can go fuck himself.
Brent shakes his head vehemently. “No, dude. I’ve seen this before, believe me.” He scowls. “Look it’s probably not your friends on this, but their families, and the attorneys they’ve hired, and that fucking douchebag prosecutor.”
Oh, right. To make this even more fun, Jared fucking Traif - that asshole state prosecutor who tried to string me up to dry - is getting back involved. Back on his high horse too.
Brent shakes his head. “They smell blood in the water, Sebastian. And it’s gonna be worse if you’re still calling them your friends, trust me.”
“Why the fuck shouldn’t I just call them?”
I usually loathe listening to people when I’ve got my mind made up. But I’m just sort of done here. I’m weakened, and off, and on the fucking edge.
Which apparently means actually listening to someone who’s trying to help for once.
“Because it’s just going to be used against you.” He sighs heavily. “Bastian you hired me for a reason. Trust me on this one.”
I frown, letting my head drop back against the wall I’m leaning against and immediately regretting it as the hangover pain lances through it.
“So, what, I just stay here and wait to see what happens?”
“You stay here and wait to see what happens.”
“Goddamnit.”
Brent nods slowly. “The clock is ticking, Sebastian. Right now, the game we have to play is protecting what you’ve got left.”
He glances around my wreck of a room.
“You should like, get someone in here.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve got a housekeeper, right?”
“Thank you, Brent,” I grunt, curling up against the wall and holding my head.
“I’ll be in touch.”
I hear him start to get his shit together into his briefcase and then head for the door when his footsteps stop.
“Hey, Bastian.”
I glance up.
“Looks like your flowers are dying.”
***
I lie to Brent - I do make a phone call.
Just one.
I’ve previously called every fucking hotel on the south fork of Long Island, and it ends up being the Beachcomber, just outside South Neck that she picks.
“Room two-one-two,” I bark into the phone at the front desk clerk who answers.
“Excuse me?” she whines in a pissy, annoying voice.
“Room two-one-two,” I repeat, my temper flaring. “Transfer me, now.”
Fuck more flies with honey. I’m pure fucking vinegar right now.
The phone clicks, and for a second I feel my blood pressure spike, wondering if she fucking hung up on me. But then I hear the secondary click of the transfer, and the sound of the phone being picked up.
“Hello?”
A guy.
A fucking guy answers.
“Who the fuck are you.”
My voice is lead and death, my vision a black tunnel.
“Who the fuck are you, pal!” The guy yells back.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Fuck it, I don’t even care. I don’t even care if she’s gone out and brought ten guys back to her motel since running out of my life.
“Look, I don’t care who you are. Just get Ana on the phone.”
“Listen dipshit, who is this?!” The guy bellows.
“Get. ANA,” I roar.
“There’s no Ana here!”
I pause, brow furrowing as I fumble on my side table for a cigarette.
What.
“Dear, who is it?”
A woman’s voice - very mid-western sounding, calls from somewhere in the background over the line.
“Some asshole.” The guy clears his throat. “Listen pal, fuck off. And don’t call me and my wife’s room again. I’m on vacation, douchebag.”
Click.
The line goes dead. I light the cigarette, pulling heavily on it before I snatch the phone up and call the main office again.
Bitch-voice lets it ring five fucking times before she decides to answer.
“Beachcomber, this is Melis—”
“I said room two-one-two.”
“Oh,” her voice goes flat. “It’s you again.”
“Yeah, it’s me again,” I snarl, pinching my nose with two fingers. “You transferred me to the wrong room.”
“I transferred you to two-one-two.”
I swallow, eyes narrowing.
“Well, where’s the girl who was there?”
“I have no idea.”
I grit my teeth, balling my hand into a fist over and over again.
“Is she in the hotel?”
“Oh, no. Says here she checked out three days ago.”
Motherfucker.
“I paid the night manager to tell me if she left.”
“I’m not the night manager.”
“No shit,” I mutter.
“Anything else I can do for you?” she says flatly in full bitch-voice-mode.
“No, that’s—”
She hangs up.
Bitch.
I pull myself off the floor and make it a full five steps before sinking into my chair.
She’s gone, I’m stuck here, and this shit is falling the fuck apart. No Ana means Franklin is going to walk all over this will. No Ana means I’m falling apart with all my friends and familiar faces turning their backs on me.
But most of all, no Ana means one thing above the rest. One thing that matters more than the rest of the shit stacked together.
No Ana means no Ana.
There’s things that we’ll never know
When we’re screaming like a tornado.
Sweat pours down my back as I come to a stuttering stop in the driveway. I wince, holding my arms over my head and sucking in air as the muscles clench and seize in my legs.
I’m out of running shape.
Also, LA is hot as hell. I glance up at the blazing sun, shielding my eyes and trying to catch my breath before I trot up the driveway to Andi’s house. I stretch my hamstrings on the front porch of the Silverlake neighborhood house, listening to the driving guitar sounds and muffled sound of a drum kit coming from the - not quite - soundproof basement.
Andi’s a friend from the music scene I met out here who sings lead and plays guitar for this incredible band called the Slow Swell. She’s also been g
racious enough to give me a spare bedroom to crash in since I’ve moved back.
That was two weeks ago.
It took me all of one night at the Beachcomber Motel back in South Neck to realize I was done. I’d hit the end of whatever the hell it was that was still keeping me in that place.
So I left - same as the time before, nine years previous.
I spent a few days in Austin first with my dad. And for a minute, that felt like the place to be - like home. Being back in Texas felt like coming back to my roots, especially seeing Mac and Abby. I put on a brave face, and I put up my best armor, and it wasn’t until my dad busted me looking at apartment rentals online that he finally shook his head and called me on my bullshit.
After that, it was back to LA, and to whatever was left for me here.
Bastian called about half a million times at first. With a slightly wincing pain inside, I think about how I would have given him such shit for that a few weeks before.
Now it’s just painful.
Eventually, he stopped calling.
Fuck him.
I’ve emailed Jack about a dozen times since I’ve gotten back, but so far, there’s been no reply. This is the part where if I knew who he really was, I’d be Facebook stalking the shit out of him to see if he’s met someone.
He probably has.
That probably shouldn’t sting so much.
Thankfully, most of the people and bands from my old circuit here had space for opening spots pretty much immediately, so it’s been a little bit of a whirlwind two weeks of getting back into the scene, playing a zillion shows all over town, and getting back into the groove, which helps. I’ve even got a solo show coming up in a week, at an awesome venue that usually packs in a great crowd. It’s no sit-down at Luminous Records, but whatever. You’ve gotta start somewhere. I have to start somewhere, after being wrecked by Bastian.
Again.
Andi and her band are still practicing downstairs for their gig tomorrow night, so I leave them be and shower. I slip into my usual uniform - jean shorts and a tank top - and I’m about to start getting my act together to get some practice time in myself when there’s a knock at Andi’s front door.
I wait for her to get it - it’s not like anyone’s looking for me here. But when I realize she’s definitely not hearing it with the band blasting away downstairs, I set my guitar down and skip to the door to get it myself.